This EdTech Startup Helps Kids In The U.S. And Around The World Learn STEAM Subjects Together

A lot of people read I Am Malala, Malala Yousafzai’s bestselling memoir, but students in Level Up Village’s Global Conversations course did so along with kids in Pakistan. Cofounder Amy McCooe’s son was among them. “His ability to speak to a boy his age in Pakistan about their educations, and also things like going to the beach and what animals they liked was amazing,” says McCooe.

Giving kids that kind of global perspective while also teaching them STEAM subjects—STEM, plus the arts—is exactly why McCooe and cofounder Neesha Rahim started LUV in 2012. The education platform connects U.S. children in grades K-9 with children in developing countries to together do things like build websites that explore climate change, take virtual field trips to learn about endangered species, and dissect frogs. Since its launch, LUV has worked with about 100 U.S. schools in 15 states and more than 30 global organizations in more than 20 countries.

“Our kids are already being thrown out on a global stage, with Instagram and Snapchat, and we have to give them the scaffolding to support that,” says McCooe. “We firmly believe that kids need to develop their global perspective and know how to work with people around the world.”

Most of LUV’s project-based courses are held after school and over the summer. The startup has a ‘take a class, give a class’ model, with a portion of the fee American parents pay funding them in a developing country. It works with NGOs to develop local partnerships, provide space or computers needed for courses and the like. In India, LUV and partners turned a bus into a mobile tech lab so children in a variety of locations could take night classes. For a course linking kids in New Orleans and Uganda, LUV provided schools with solar cells, batteries, LED lights and 3-D printers to work on solutions for bringing electricity to areas with an unreliable grid.

Students initially connected via Skype and messaging, but LUV has since built its own platform--a contemporary twist on the pen pal. Kids work together primarily through video letters, which allows them to watch and replay the videos without regard to time differences and to take time to reflect before responding. Teachers can also do any training they need for a course online. “We know how demanding teachers’ jobs are, so we wanted to make it as easy as possible for them,” says McCooe.

The cofounders met while working on after school programs at their children’s schools in Greenwich, Conn. Their passions and backgrounds meshed well. “We both were looking for STEM courses for our kids, and we had the same desire for our kids to develop the soft skills and learn how to collaborate and work with others, especially those

A student at KenyaConnect watches a video from her student partner in the U.S. while taking a Level Up Village course.

from other cultures,” says Rahim, who has a masters in social work and international affairs from Columbia University and whose previous experience includes stints at UNICEF and Seeds of Peace. “There is a lot of grumbling about our broken education system,” she says. “We don’t believe in being complacent, and instead of complaining we believe in coming up with an idea.” McCooe, who has an MBA, worked in finance and operations, including as a consultant with
PricewaterhouseCoopers and an executive at a media startup. Her father was an headmaster, and she grew up around educators. “I knew how passionate and dedicated teachers are and how they are always looking for new things they can do for their students,” she says.

LUV works with both private and public schools. Afterschool courses, Rahim says, are a great way to bring new things into a school. “The kids are in small groups and they want to be in the class,” says Rahim. After getting an idea—often inspired by their own kids and their friends—McCooe and Rahim work with educators and advisors to flesh out the class. Across the globe, there's demand for courses with a technology component.

Running a startup is “all about balancing resources and demand,” says McCooe. “I joke that business schools should teach chess instead of corporate finance.” Rahim compares being an entrepreneur to raising a child. “We are so busy and things are happening so fast,” she says. “Sometimes it seems so long but it goes by so quickly.” With schools now planning courses for next year, LUV’s staff of eight full-timers is busy reaching out to schools across the country—as well as in England and Australia—and is soon to close a funding round. Says Rahim: “We’ve set our sights pretty high."

I've been covering entrepreneurs for more than a decade. I've been an editor at Money and BusinessWeek, and contribute to Atlantic.com, Fortune.com, FastCompany.com, and BtheChange, among others.